


make a name and burn it down

by scribblscrabbl



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), The Hurt Locker (2008), The Town (2010)
Genre: Brandt backstory, Gen, Multiple identities, William Brandt is William James and James Couglin, brandt is a BAMF, implied brandt/hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-01
Updated: 2012-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times when Brandt doesn't quite remember who he's supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make a name and burn it down

**Author's Note:**

> Brandt backstory. Kind of. Cross-posted on LJ.

He lied to Sanborn that day with the taste of blood and debris caking his mouth. He could still feel the force of the blast compressing his ribs, and hear the hajji’s prayers to Allah.

He remembers his exact words. _I guess I don’t think about it._ Fucking bullshit. Now that’s what he’s good at, better at than defusing IEDs and recovering intelligence. The best at bullshit—and the worst at robbing banks. (Jem would disagree, but that would’ve been before he’d caught a few slugs in the face and wound up in the palm of Frawley’s hand.)

He figured it was the least he could do for Sanborn after causing so much grief, pass on the recipe for staying alive that he never followed. What he did was count the bombs like birthday candles to bide his time.

IMF is nothing like EOD, but it all feels the same to him. War’s all the same, whether it’s fought out in the open or behind closed doors. He’s still a soldier, just no longer the one leading. He remembers every rotation, the men lost and how he lost them. (A blast was neater, enveloped a body within its radius and left little behind.) Sometimes he needs Ethan to know that he gets it. After they shipped him out to fight for his country, he’d taken a few long looks at those empty ruptured streets and figured that the best a soldier could do was fight for his brothers.

He watches Ethan the way he watched Sanborn, and Eldridge, keeps him on his radar like the blip of a heart monitor. Ethan leads as if it’s the mission that matters most. Thing is, he’s a bleeding heart, same as James.

*

The day he’s formally reassigned to the field, he packs up William J. Brandt, Chief Analyst into a single square box.

He’s pulling packing tape across the top when Ethan walks in.

“What does the J stand for?” In his hand is the gold plaque that used to decorate the door. 

“Josiah. What are you doing at headquarters? I thought the plan was to meet in Istanbul.” The office space changes Ethan, makes him look slighter, but Will knows better. The men who underestimate Ethan Hunt usually end up dead. 

Ethan raises an eyebrow and lays the plaque on the box, fingertips lingering for a second around the edge.

“Josiah, huh?” A smile plays at the corners of his mouth like he wants to know why Will’s lying to him but this time he’ll let it slide. “You missed a box.”

He bends over to retrieve it, half hidden beneath the desk. Will thought he’d been careful to tuck it away and press down the flaps. He’s learned that people like asking questions until they stop liking the answers. (He remembers Sanborn’s face when he told him what was in the box, _goddamn nutjob_.)

Ethan sets it between them. There are nicks and scrapes along the sides, tokens of love and war. He keeps his hands still against the edges, eyes sweeping over the contents.

“Everything you can’t bring yourself to throw away even though you should’ve a long time ago.”

“Something like that.”

Ethan reaches in to pick up the picture of Doug, already faded and bent at one corner like he’s one of the lost kids they used to put on the side of milk cartons.

“My son,” he says before Ethan asks, before Ethan even suggests that he might want to know. “He’s probably as tall as I am now. Looks more like his mom though.”

“You don’t see him?” Ethan returns the picture to the pile and his hand to the edge of the box like the whole thing might blow and obliterate them in a heartbeat. Will figures it’s not far from the truth.

“He’s better off without me.” He’s never said it out loud, not even to Connie the last time he left her on the doorstep with Doug on her hip because he thought he only loved one thing. (Turns out he never loved it; he just couldn’t live without it.)

“I know how that goes.” 

He imagines that Ethan Hunt could be the next thing he adds to this box of his.

*

The accent was the first thing he buried that belonged to Jem, and it was easier than he’d hoped. Three days out in the desert with sand in his teeth and eyelashes and every goddamn direction he turned, and he could barely remember Charlestown. He’d been a townie through and through, but he came to figure that war could wipe a man clean if that was what he wanted.

The second thing he buried was the ring. It left a pale thin line when he slipped it off and hurled it as far as he could through Baghdad. He wondered if someone would recover it from the rubble and mourn for its owner, most likely dead and gone. He wondered if Dougie still had his or if he’d long given it up because it only reminded him of what he hated, and what he couldn’t save. Jem had been convinced that there were some bonds thicker than blood, but those ruptured all the same in the end. 

For Jem it felt like .762 rounds straight through the back, but James understood it was for the best. James wanted to imagine that Dougie found his mom, settled down with his girl, and wore a suit to work instead of a bulletproof vest. 

Every time James defused a bomb, he counted it against Jem’s record—a rap sheet to prove that townies might be thieves but they were no cowards. Turned out it took a hell of a lot more cojones to walk the straight and narrow than to boost banks and kill cops. 

His path to righteousness had been rigged with explosives on all sides, and he imagines it couldn’t have been any other way.

*

They needed a top-level analyst to comb through the intel, name faces and catalogue risks, so he stayed behind. The mission for Hunt’s team was to intercept the latest shipment of firearms to Mexico’s most prolific drug cartel. 

_Don’t win the war without me_ , he told them before they parted ways and Ethan, in his usual fashion, gave an inscrutable smile and a non-response.

Five hours later he’s staring blearily at the mugshot of an FBI agent turned rogue he can’t quite put his finger on when he gets a text from Benji. It takes him three reads to understand against the roaring in his ears. 

_Covers blown. Shipping containers packed with C-4. Rendezvous Armory Park._

It’s another five hours before he lands in Tucson International and a second text from Benji lights up his phone. _Still no Ethan._ He rents a car and sits for a moment, seatbelt buckled and hands twitching around the steering wheel. He hasn’t had a smoke since he set foot in the States after his final tour. It was a habit that suited James, not Brandt. Now he’s thinking to hell with clean breaks. He needs the calm that sets in after a slow drag, the kind that convinces him if his world were to topple, he could build it back up.

He stops by the nearest 7-Eleven and cracks the window open before he lights up, holds the smoke in his lungs until he can feel the wiring of an IED between his fingers.

He drives to the warehouse because he wants to see the extent of the wreckage. (There will be no bodies; the C-4 would’ve made sure of it.) He stops the car 200 feet away and flicks his cigarette out the window. It looks like a self-contained warzone, a ghastly intrusion on the idyllic sprawl of the Sonoran desert.

He starts to imagine worst-case scenarios because that’s how he learned to cope with war—embrace his nightmares before he has to live them. He imagines Ethan blown to ashes in the wind, Ethan’s body torn beyond recognition, Ethan bleeding out on asphalt from a shrapnel wound, and he wants someone to burn. He wants to hunt down every last one of those motherfuckers and make sure they know his face before he sends them to hell. 

_The boy’s no older than twelve. The stench rising from his body is almost unbearable. He must’ve taken his last breath with the weight of a homemade bomb in his gut, skin painted in blood. Another sacrificial lamb for the holy war. His eyes are open, unseeing but aware of the sins committed by the men he would call his brothers. He deserves reparations. He deserves a jihad in his name._

His phone beeps.

_Ethan’s here._

When he gets to the safehouse, Ethan’s pale as a sheet in a chair by the window with a tumbler of scotch in his hand and that goddamn smile of his. Jane’s rummaging through the first aid kit. Benji’s hands are flying across his keyboard, probably getting word to IMF that they’re not ready to be disavowed quite yet.

“I’m fine, Jane, just sit down will you?” 

“He’s not fine. Where the fuck have you been?” Ethan turns, caught off guard for just the second, and Will decides he absolutely needs a drink.

“Brandt,” like Ethan’s making sure he’s there when he’s not supposed to be. “Had to lose a few tails so I took the scenic route. Worried about me?”

Will takes down his scotch in one gulp. “No one can beat your track record of death-defying stunts, Hunt. I’ve learned to roll with the punches. Jane, I’ll take care of it.”

She hands over the supplies and smiles a little, confesses that she still doesn’t quite know how to cope.

“How in God’s name did you do it? I saw you walk in, and then five minutes later, _KABOOM_.” Benji mimics the explosion with his hands and stares wide-eyed at Ethan.

Will pulls a chair over and shifts his seat until their knees touch. He knocks Ethan’s hand away and peels the blood-caked shirt from Ethan’s skin. 

“Jesus.” The cut isn’t deep, the blood already clotted, but it’s long and jagged, spanning Ethan’s side from upper ribs to navel. “You’ve got nine lives, you know that?”

“I get lucky.” Ethan’s teasing a little, voice low, and Will doesn’t dare look up in case he gives something away.

His breathing feels erratic but his fingers are steady as they disinfect the wound. Ethan inhales sharply through his nose, hand flexing around his knee, but makes no other sound. (He remembers the time Jem dug a 9mm out of Dougie’s thigh with his Swiss Army knife after a run-in with a couple little shits from across the park, and Dougie wouldn’t quit howling at him to take it easy even though there was nothing easy about it.)

“It’ll leave a scar,” he says needlessly, applying the bandages one by one until Ethan feels whole again under his hands. 

“Another one for the books.” It’s what James said after his bomb count passed a hundred, even when he knew he’d accomplished fuck all in the grand scheme of things and it was still guaranteed that he’d die sooner rather than later.

“Still keeping count?” He finally looks at Ethan then and decides his opinion that Ethan’s the better man hasn’t changed.

“Just biding my time.”

He thinks he’s heard that one before too.

*

It’s Christmas Eve and he’s standing next to a trio of carolers, frowning at the directions to Jane’s condo he’d scribbled on a post-it an hour ago. He refuses to invest in a smart phone, much to Benji’s horror and Ethan’s amusement, because he’s a minimalist, a traditionalist. The way he sees it, phones are made for talking. (He was never into gadgets as a kid, only into cars and picking fights with boys twice his size, making a name for himself the only way he knew how.)

There’s a spectacular display of lights down Jane’s street, strung fastidiously on the trees and lampposts to lend the city a little charm. Holiday spirit is the one thing he secretly enjoys in excess, maybe the one thing that’s stayed with him over the years, something of Jem’s he couldn’t extricate.

When he arrives at the front door he stands there for a moment before pressing the buzzer, wondering if he’s overdressed, or underdressed, and if Jane would’ve preferred white wine to red; he forgot to ask. He looks down at the box in his hand, wrapped plainly in gold, trying to remember the last time he put presents under a tree. He’d spent four Christmases overseas, the first two with a letter from Connie telling him how fast his son had grown, and the next two thinking about the kind of man William James was turning out to be.

He takes the elevator to the sixth floor and scuffs his shoes against the carpet before Jane opens the door, even though there’s no snow or dirt to scuff off; it’s what he always does (what his mama had always taught him to do). Jane’s beaming when she invites him in, hair loose over her shoulders and feet bare against the hardwood.

“You’re right on time. Benji’s started to steal the pecans off the pie when he thinks I’m not looking.”

He takes off his shoes and sets them next to Ethan’s, the black Sperry loafers he buys by the truckload because he claims only they fit the peculiar shape of his feet.

“I think your stealth mode needs more practice, Benji.”

“Tell that to my empty stomach.” Benji sidles up to the dinner table and eyes the spread of food, set on pristine beige tablecloth patterned with tiny red holly berries. 

“This place is amazing.” Will sets down the wine and admires the living space, the exposed brick on the back wall, the wrought-iron banisters leading to the loft, the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Any of your neighbors selling?”

“Ethan’s my neighbor. Maybe you two can strike up a bargain,” Jane says, with an undertone of devious intent Will chooses to ignore, just as Ethan steps in through the sliding panel leading out to the roof.

“Brandt, you’re fashionably late.” He’s wearing a shirt Will’s never seen before, a black v-neck that looks like it’d be soft between his fingers, warm from Ethan’s skin. Ethan’s feet are bare like Jane’s, and for a moment Will can’t look away. (The intimacy of it blindsides him a little, leaves him unprotected).

“I’m punctual,” he corrects, averting his eyes. “You were early.”

“Play nice, boys, it’s Christmas.” Jane gives them a pointed look and ushers them to the table.

Will picks the seat next to Ethan, knowing that he’d be more comfortable without Ethan’s eyes across the table, persuading him to let loose his secrets ( _show me yours and I’ll show you mine_ ). 

They pass around the food and talk about everything but work. Will learns what he hasn’t read off their files, that Jane’s grandma taught her to make pecan pie when she was eight and that Benji accidentally set his desk on fire at his first job with a scented candle. Ethan tells them about his childhood in Wisconsin, about riding horses across 20 acres of farmland and milking cows before school. Even now he gets up at the crack of dawn and feels the thunderstorms in his bones.

And then it’s Will’s turn before he’s worked out which story to tell. (He’d agreed ten years ago to do his penance, and in return they’d covered his tracks out of Boston. Ten years later he’s still walking on eggshells, terrified that what they meant for him to build, they never meant for him to keep.) 

“Oh, come on, Will, I’m sure you have loads of stories,” Benji prods over his second piece of pie. “Bet you were a troublemaker as a kid, weren’t you.”

“Or a prep school boy, straight As, with a girl on each arm.” Jane considers him with a bright, inquisitive smile and he feels a little sick.

“I’d bore you with the details. There really isn’t much to tell.” He rolls his fork between his fingers and then sets it down. “The view out there must be great. I think I’ll get some fresh air.”

The night is cold and calm when he steps outside. It smells of snow even though the air is dry, reminding him of white Christmases and tinsel made from colored paper, a time when heroes and villains had been the stuff of bedtime stories.

He hears the door slide open.

“Everything okay?” Ethan appears beside him, eyes dark and warm without expectations, and Will no longer remembers who he’s supposed to be, if there was ever a worthwhile distinction.

He doesn’t answer and stares out onto the river and the skyline, a strip of light that looks the same in every city once the sun is gone.

“It’s Jane and Benji in there. You know you can trust them. They’ve saved my ass more times than I can remember.”

“Yea. Yea, I know.” Will wonders what it is about war that still makes him a coward. “I trust you.”

Ethan knows there are secrets, but he can only guess at how ugly they are, what William Brandt will be to him when they’re out in the open.

“I’m just scared shitless sometimes. That everyone’s better off without me in the end.”

He expects something to crumble, to burn at the admission, but the night moves on at its usual pace. His heart is slow and steady where it should be.

“You’re a good man, Will. I don’t care where you come from, or what you’ve done to get here. Here is what matters.” Something about the set of Ethan’s mouth makes _here_ feel like exactly where they’re standing, six stories high with nowhere better to be, and Will (James, Jem) imagines that nothing lasts forever, but some things last long enough.

He waits for Jane and Benji to join them before he starts to talk about the town, the house his gramps passed onto his dad that was meant for him and his son, and why everyone called him Jem.


End file.
